Aims in Education

Chapter 8 of Democracy and Education by John Dewey

1. The Nature of an Aim. The account of education given in our earlier chapters virtually
anticipated the results reached in a discussion of the purport of
education in a democratic community. For it assumed that the aim
of education is to enable individuals to continue their education
-- or that the object and reward of learning is continued
capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the
members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is
mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the
reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide
stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And
this means a democratic society. In our search for aims in
education, we are not concerned, therefore, with finding an end
outside of the educative process to which education is
subordinate. Our whole conception forbids. We are rather
concerned with the contrast which exists when aims belong within
the process in which they operate and when they are set up from
without. And the latter state of affairs must obtain when social
relationships are not equitably balanced. For in that case, some
portions of the whole social group will find their aims
determined by an external dictation; their aims will not arise
from the free growth of their own experience, and their nominal
aims will be means to more ulterior ends of others rather than
truly their own.

Our first question is to define the nature of an aim so far as it
falls within an activity, instead of being furnished from
without. We approach the definition by a contrast of mere
results with ends. Any exhibition of energy has results. The
wind blows about the sands of the desert; the position of the
grains is changed. Here is a result, an effect, but not an end.
For there is nothing in the outcome which completes or fulfills
what went before it. There is mere spatial redistribution. One
state of affairs is just as good as any other. Consequently
there is no basis upon which to select an earlier state of
affairs as a beginning, a later as an end, and to consider what
intervenes as a process of transformation and realization.

Consider for example the activities of bees in contrast with the
changes in the sands when the wind blows them about. The results
of the bees' actions may be called ends not because they are
designed or consciously intended, but because they are true
terminations or completions of what has preceded. When the bees
gather pollen and make wax and build cells, each step prepares
the way for the next. When cells are built, the queen lays eggs
in them; when eggs are laid, they are sealed and bees brood them
and keep them at a temperature required to hatch them. When they
are hatched, bees feed the young till they can take care of
themselves. Now we are so familiar with such facts, that we are
apt to dismiss them on the ground that life and instinct are a
kind of miraculous thing anyway. Thus we fail to note what the
essential characteristic of the event is; namely, the
significance of the temporal place and order of each element; the
way each prior event leads into its successor while the successor
takes up what is furnished and utilizes it for some other stage,
until we arrive at the end, which, as it were, summarizes and
finishes off the process. Since aims relate always to results,
the first thing to look to when it is a question of aims, is
whether the work assigned possesses intrinsic continuity. Or is
it a mere serial aggregate of acts, first doing one thing and
then another? To talk about an educational aim when approximately
each act of a pupil is dictated by the teacher, when the only
order in the sequence of his acts is that which comes from the
assignment of lessons and the giving of directions by another, is
to talk nonsense. It is equally fatal to an aim to permit
capricious or discontinuous action in the name of spontaneous
self- expression. An aim implies an orderly and ordered
activity, one in which the order consists in the progressive
completing of a process. Given an activity having a time span
and cumulative growth within the time succession, an aim means
foresight in advance of the end or possible termination. If bees
anticipated the consequences of their activity, if they perceived
their end in imaginative foresight, they would have the primary
element in an aim. Hence it is nonsense to talk about the aim of
education--or any other undertaking--where conditions do not
permit of foresight of results, and do not stimulate a person to
look ahead to see what the outcome of a given activity is to be.
In the next place the aim as a foreseen end gives direction to
the activity; it is not an idle view of a mere spectator, but
influences the steps taken to reach the end. The foresight
functions in three ways. In the first place, it involves careful
observation of the given conditions to see what are the means
available for reaching the end, and to discover the hindrances in
the way. In the second place, it suggests the proper order or
sequence in the use of means. It facilitates an economical
selection and arrangement. In the third place, it makes choice
of alternatives possible. If we can predict the outcome of
acting this way or that, we can then compare the value of the two
courses of action; we can pass judgment upon their relative
desirability. If we know that stagnant water breeds mosquitoes
and that they are likely to carry disease, we can, disliking that
anticipated result, take steps to avert it. Since we do not
anticipate results as mere intellectual onlookers, but as persons
concerned in the outcome, we are partakers in the process which
produces the result. We intervene to bring about this result or
that.

Of course these three points are closely connected with one
another. We can definitely foresee results only as we make
careful scrutiny of present conditions, and the importance of the
outcome supplies the motive for observations. The more adequate
our observations, the more varied is the scene of conditions and
obstructions that presents itself, and the more numerous are the
alternatives between which choice may be made. In turn, the more
numerous the recognized possibilities of the situation, or
alternatives of action, the more meaning does the chosen activity
possess, and the more flexibly controllable is it. Where only a
single outcome has been thought of, the mind has nothing else to
think of; the meaning attaching to the act is limited. One only
steams ahead toward the mark. Sometimes such a narrow course may
be effective. But if unexpected difficulties offer themselves,
one has not as many resources at command as if he had chosen the
same line of action after a broader survey of the possibilities
of the field. He cannot make needed readjustments readily.

The net conclusion is that acting with an aim is all one with
acting intelligently. To foresee a terminus of an act is to have
a basis upon which to observe, to select, and to order objects
and our own capacities. To do these things means to have a mind
-- for mind is precisely intentional purposeful activity
controlled by perception of facts and their relationships to one
another. To have a mind to do a thing is to foresee a future
possibility; it is to have a plan for its accomplishment; it is
to note the means which make the plan capable of execution and
the obstructions in the way, -- or, if it is really a mind to do
the thing and not a vague aspiration -- it is to have a plan
which takes account of resources and difficulties. Mind is
capacity to refer present conditions to future results, and
future consequences to present conditions. And these traits are
just what is meant by having an aim or a purpose. A man is
stupid or blind or unintelligent -- lacking in mind -- just in
the degree in which in any activity he does not know what he is
about, namely, the probable consequences of his acts. A man is
imperfectly intelligent when he contents himself with looser
guesses about the outcome than is needful, just taking a chance
with his luck, or when he forms plans apart from study of the
actual conditions, including his own capacities. Such relative
absence of mind means to make our feelings the measure of what is
to happen. To be intelligent we must "stop, look, listen" in
making the plan of an activity.

To identify acting with an aim and intelligent activity is enough
to show its value -- its function in experience. We are only too
given to making an entity out of the abstract noun
"consciousness." We forget that it comes from the adjective
"conscious." To be conscious is to be aware of what we are about;
conscious signifies the deliberate, observant, planning traits of
activity. Consciousness is nothing which we have which gazes
idly on the scene around one or which has impressions made upon
it by physical things; it is a name for the purposeful quality of
an activity, for the fact that it is directed by an aim. Put the
other way about, to have an aim is to act with meaning, not like
an automatic machine; it is to mean to do something and to
perceive the meaning of things in the light of that intent.

2. The Criteria of Good Aims. We may apply the results of our
discussion to a consideration of the criteria involved in a
correct establishing of aims. (1) The aim set up must be an
outgrowth of existing conditions. It must be based upon a
consideration of what is already going on; upon the resources and
difficulties of the situation. Theories about the proper end of
our activities -- educational and moral theories -- often violate
this principle. They assume ends lying outside our activities;
ends foreign to the concrete makeup of the situation; ends which
issue from some outside source. Then the problem is to bring our
activities to bear upon the realization of these externally
supplied ends. They are something for which we ought to act. In
any case such "aims" limit intelligence; they are not the
expression of mind in foresight, observation, and choice of the
better among alternative possibilities. They limit intelligence
because, given ready-made, they must be imposed by some authority
external to intelligence, leaving to the latter nothing but a
mechanical choice of means.

(2) We have spoken as if aims could be completely formed prior to
the attempt to realize them. This impression must now be
qualified. The aim as it first emerges is a mere tentative
sketch. The act of striving to realize it tests its worth. If
it suffices to direct activity successfully, nothing more is
required, since its whole function is to set a mark in advance;
and at times a mere hint may suffice. But usually -- at least in
complicated situations -- acting upon it brings to light
conditions which had been overlooked. This calls for revision of
the original aim; it has to be added to and subtracted from. An
aim must, then, be flexible; it must be capable of alteration to
meet circumstances. An end established externally to the process
of action is always rigid. Being inserted or imposed from
without, it is not supposed to have a working relationship to the
concrete conditions of the situation. What happens in the course
of action neither confirms, refutes, nor alters it. Such an end
can only be insisted upon. The failure that results from its
lack of adaptation is attributed simply to the perverseness of
conditions, not to the fact that the end is not reasonable under
the circumstances. The value of a legitimate aim, on the
contrary, lies in the fact that we can use it to change
conditions. It is a method for dealing with conditions so as to
effect desirable alterations in them. A farmer who should
passively accept things just as he finds them would make as great
a mistake as he who framed his plans in complete disregard of
what soil, climate, etc., permit. One of the evils of an
abstract or remote external aim in education is that its very
inapplicability in practice is likely to react into a haphazard
snatching at immediate conditions. A good aim surveys the
present state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative
plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet
modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is
experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in
action.

(3) The aim must always represent a freeing of activities. The
term end in view is suggestive, for it puts before the mind the
termination or conclusion of some process. The only way in which
we can define an activity is by putting before ourselves the
objects in which it terminates -- as one's aim in shooting is the
target. But we must remember that the object is only a mark or
sign by which the mind specifies the activity one desires to
carry out. Strictly speaking, not the target but hitting the
target is the end in view; one takes aim by means of the target,
but also by the sight on the gun. The different objects which
are thought of are means of directing the activity. Thus one
aims at, say, a rabbit; what he wants is to shoot straight: a
certain kind of activity. Or, if it is the rabbit he wants, it
is not rabbit apart from his activity, but as a factor in
activity; he wants to eat the rabbit, or to show it as evidence
of his marksmanship -- he wants to do something with it. The
doing with the thing, not the thing in isolation, is his end.
The object is but a phase of the active end, -- continuing the
activity successfully. This is what is meant by the phrase, used
above, "freeing activity."

In contrast with fulfilling some process in order that activity
may go on, stands the static character of an end which is imposed
from without the activity. It is always conceived of as fixed;
it is something to be attained and possessed. When one has such
a notion, activity is a mere unavoidable means to something else;
it is not significant or important on its own account. As
compared with the end it is but a necessary evil; something which
must be gone through before one can reach the object which is
alone worth while. In other words, the external idea of the aim
leads to a separation of means from end, while an end which grows
up within an activity as plan for its direction is always both
ends and means, the distinction being only one of convenience.
Every means is a temporary end until we have attained it. Every
end becomes a means of carrying activity further as soon as it is
achieved. We call it end when it marks off the future direction
of the activity in which we are engaged; means when it marks off
the present direction. Every divorce of end from means
diminishes by that much the significance of the activity and
tends to reduce it to a drudgery from which one would escape if
he could. A farmer has to use plants and animals to carry on his
farming activities. It certainly makes a great difference to his
life whether he is fond of them, or whether he regards them
merely as means which he has to employ to get something else in
which alone he is interested. In the former case, his entire
course of activity is significant; each phase of it has its own
value. He has the experience of realizing his end at every
stage; the postponed aim, or end in view, being merely a sight
ahead by which to keep his activity going fully and freely. For
if he does not look ahead, he is more likely to find himself
blocked. The aim is as definitely a means of action as is any
other portion of an activity.

3. Applications in Education. There is nothing peculiar about
educational aims. They are just like aims in any directed
occupation. The educator, like the farmer, has certain things to
do, certain resources with which to do, and certain obstacles
with which to contend. The conditions with which the farmer
deals, whether as obstacles or resources, have their own
structure and operation independently of any purpose of his.
Seeds sprout, rain falls, the sun shines, insects devour, blight
comes, the seasons change. His aim is simply to utilize these
various conditions; to make his activities and their energies
work together, instead of against one another. It would be
absurd if the farmer set up a purpose of farming, without any
reference to these conditions of soil, climate, characteristic of
plant growth, etc. His purpose is simply a foresight of the
consequences of his energies connected with those of the things
about him, a foresight used to direct his movements from day to
day. Foresight of possible consequences leads to more careful
and extensive observation of the nature and performances of the
things he had to do with, and to laying out a plan -- that is, of
a certain order in the acts to be performed.

It is the same with the educator, whether parent or teacher. It
is as absurd for the latter to set up his "own" aims as the
proper objects of the growth of the children as it would be for
the farmer to set up an ideal of farming irrespective of
conditions. Aims mean acceptance of responsibility for the
observations, anticipations, and arrangements required in
carrying on a function -- whether farming or educating. Any aim
is of value so far as it assists observation, choice, and
planning in carrying on activity from moment to moment and hour
to hour; if it gets in the way of the individual's own common
sense (as it will surely do if imposed from without or accepted
on authority) it does harm.

And it is well to remind ourselves that education as such has no
aims. Only persons, parents, and teachers, etc., have aims, not
an abstract idea like education. And consequently their purposes
are indefinitely varied, differing with different children,
changing as children grow and with the growth of experience on
the part of the one who teaches. Even the most valid aims which
can be put in words will, as words, do more harm than good unless
one recognizes that they are not aims, but rather suggestions to
educators as to how to observe, how to look ahead, and how to
choose in liberating and directing the energies of the concrete
situations in which they find themselves. As a recent writer has
said: "To lead this boy to read Scott's novels instead of old
Sleuth's stories; to teach this girl to sew; to root out the
habit of bullying from John's make-up; to prepare this class to
study medicine, -- these are samples of the millions of aims we
have actually before us in the concrete work of education."
Bearing these qualifications in mind, we shall proceed to state
some of the characteristics found in all good educational aims.
(1) An educational aim must be founded upon the intrinsic
activities and needs (including original instincts and acquired
habits) of the given individual to be educated. The tendency of
such an aim as preparation is, as we have seen, to omit existing
powers, and find the aim in some remote accomplishment or
responsibility. In general, there is a disposition to take
considerations which are dear to the hearts of adults and set
them up as ends irrespective of the capacities of those educated.
There is also an inclination to propound aims which are so
uniform as to neglect the specific powers and requirements of an
individual, forgetting that all learning is something which
happens to an individual at a given time and place. The larger
range of perception of the adult is of great value in observing
the abilities and weaknesses of the young, in deciding what they
may amount to. Thus the artistic capacities of the adult exhibit
what certain tendencies of the child are capable of; if we did
not have the adult achievements we should be without assurance as
to the significance of the drawing, reproducing, modeling,
coloring activities of childhood. So if it were not for adult
language, we should not be able to see the import of the babbling
impulses of infancy. But it is one thing to use adult
accomplishments as a context in which to place and survey the
doings of childhood and youth; it is quite another to set them up
as a fixed aim without regard to the concrete activities of those
educated.

(2) An aim must be capable of translation into a method of
cooperating with the activities of those undergoing instruction.
It must suggest the kind of environment needed to liberate and to
organize their capacities. Unless it lends itself to the
construction of specific procedures, and unless these procedures
test, correct, and amplify the aim, the latter is worthless.
Instead of helping the specific task of teaching, it prevents the
use of ordinary judgment in observing and sizing up the
situation. It operates to exclude recognition of everything
except what squares up with the fixed end in view. Every rigid
aim just because it is rigidly given seems to render it
unnecessary to give careful attention to concrete conditions.
Since it must apply anyhow, what is the use of noting details
which do not count?

The vice of externally imposed ends has deep roots. Teachers
receive them from superior authorities; these authorities accept
them from what is current in the community. The teachers impose
them upon children. As a first consequence, the intelligence of
the teacher is not free; it is confined to receiving the aims
laid down from above. Too rarely is the individual teacher so
free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on
methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his
mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject
matter. This distrust of the teacher's experience is then
reflected in lack of confidence in the responses of pupils. The
latter receive their aims through a double or treble external
imposition, and are constantly confused by the conflict between
the aims which are natural to their own experience at the time
and those in which they are taught to acquiesce. Until the
democratic criterion of the intrinsic significance of every
growing experience is recognized, we shall be intellectually
confused by the demand for adaptation to external aims.

(3) Educators have to be on their guard against ends that are
alleged to be general and ultimate. Every activity, however
specific, is, of course, general in its ramified connections, for
it leads out indefinitely into other things. So far as a general
idea makes us more alive to these connections, it cannot be too
general. But "general" also means "abstract," or detached from
all specific context. And such abstractness means remoteness,
and throws us back, once more, upon teaching and learning as mere
means of getting ready for an end disconnected from the means.
That education is literally and all the time its own reward means
that no alleged study or discipline is educative unless it is
worth while in its own immediate having. A truly general aim
broadens the outlook; it stimulates one to take more consequences
(connections) into account. This means a wider and more flexible
observation of means. The more interacting forces, for example,
the farmer takes into account, the more varied will be his
immediate resources. He will see a greater number of possible
starting places, and a greater number of ways of getting at what
he wants to do. The fuller one's conception of possible future
achievements, the less his present activity is tied down to a
small number of alternatives. If one knew enough, one could
start almost anywhere and sustain his activities continuously and
fruitfully.

Understanding then the term general or comprehensive aim simply
in the sense of a broad survey of the field of present
activities, we shall take up some of the larger ends which have
currency in the educational theories of the day, and consider
what light they throw upon the immediate concrete and diversified
aims which are always the educator's real concern. We premise
(as indeed immediately follows from what has been said) that
there is no need of making a choice among them or regarding them
as competitors. When we come to act in a tangible way we have to
select or choose a particular act at a particular time, but any
number of comprehensive ends may exist without competition, since
they mean simply different ways of looking at the same scene.
One cannot climb a number of different mountains simultaneously,
but the views had when different mountains are ascended
supplement one another: they do not set up incompatible,
competing worlds. Or, putting the matter in a slightly different
way, one statement of an end may suggest certain questions and
observations, and another statement another set of questions,
calling for other observations. Then the more general ends we
have, the better. One statement will emphasize what another
slurs over. What a plurality of hypotheses does for the
scientific investigator, a plurality of stated aims may do for
the instructor.

Summary. An aim denotes the result of any natural process
brought to consciousness and made a factor in determining present
observation and choice of ways of acting. It signifies that an
activity has become intelligent. Specifically it means foresight
of the alternative consequences attendant upon acting in a given
situation in different ways, and the use of what is anticipated
to direct observation and experiment. A true aim is thus opposed
at every point to an aim which is imposed upon a process of
action from without. The latter is fixed and rigid; it is not a
stimulus to intelligence in the given situation, but is an
externally dictated order to do such and such things. Instead of
connecting directly with present activities, it is remote,
divorced from the means by which it is to be reached. Instead of
suggesting a freer and better balanced activity, it is a limit
set to activity. In education, the currency of these externally
imposed aims is responsible for the emphasis put upon the notion
of preparation for a remote future and for rendering the work of
both teacher and pupil mechanical and slavish.